Building Shared Meaning: Bringing the Theoretical Framework to the Participants in a Qualitative Study

• In Event: 66.080 - Roundtable Session 26
  In Roundtable Session: 66.080-8 - Perspectives and Practices of Narrative Inquiry in Educational Research

Abstract

Research on new literacies can be a challenging prospect for researchers due to the emerging nature of the subject. In this paper, we present our experience using a methodological technique that facilitated our narrative inquiry into the attitudes and perceptions of school leaders about media literacy. We experimented with providing our theoretical framework to our participants before the interviews in order to develop shared meaning for our narrative study. Our experience was generally positive as we were able to elicit rich narratives from our participants, which was the intent of our study. Some challenges associated with this strategy chiefly concerned more time spent on the research and the varying interpretations of the framework by participants.

Authors

• Tehmina Khwaja, College of William and Mary

• Kerrigan Mahoney, University of Virginia